


I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)

by sleepingnerd



Series: OzTennant's Flufftober 2018 [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Flufftober 2018, M/M, Minor Character Death, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 08:01:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16214855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepingnerd/pseuds/sleepingnerd
Summary: "By the time Bruce is seven, he hates the words. The importance of being a doctor and anti-electron collisions fades away in face of the other half of the phrase, of how he was doomed to be just like his father.A monster."Bruce thinks his soulmate will hate him. He couldn't be more wrong.





	I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)

The words appear when Bruce is five.

They’re there, spread through his ribs and reaching as far as the edge of his back, in messy handwriting. Bruce is smart and already knows how to read lots of things, but some of the words are just too complicated, so he asks his mama to tell him what it means.

“It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster.” She reads. The smile, that had lighted her face when she spotted “Dr. Banner”, fades away just as quickly, leaving her face ashen. Purple bruises are blooming over old ones in her face and body, and suddenly she can’t look at her sweet son again.

She never tells him what the words mean.

-

By the time Bruce is seven, he hates the words. The importance of being a doctor and anti-electron collisions fades away in face of the other half of the phrase, of how he was doomed to be just like his father. 

A monster.

He can almost feel them burn against his skin, every time his father’s voice becomes too loud, every time he adds to the mosaic of purples and blues he and his mother had become. He hates them hates them _hates them._ The anger grows inside his heart, ugly and dark, until it’s so big he almost wants to scream.

But he doesn’t. He never does, because to actually turn into a monster is his greatest fear. He keeps his voice soft, and talks little, if not at all. He buries the anger deep where he can’t see it, each and every time, and never learns how to stop.

-

His mother’s blood is so very red.

Bruce feels like he will never be able to forget it, how she looked as the light left her eyes. The blood pours down her forehead and into her light blonde hair, turning it into an ugly brown. Bruces shakes and shakes her, telling her to wake up. His father, hands still stained red, doesn’t seem to care.

His voice feels not his own as he starts to scream.

-

Eventually, father goes to prison and Bruce to Aunt Susan. She tells him to call her Mrs. Drake and to be silent unless talked to. She is strict, and not near as warm as mama used to be, but Bruce doesn’t mind it, much.

He spends his days reading anything he can get his hands on, because at least amid words he never has to really think. Although unwilling, he finds himself drifting to the sciences. The numbers and formulas and clear facts seem infinitely more interesting than anything he came upon. He doesn’t want to follow the words, doesn’t want for any of it to be true, but learning seems to be the only thing he loves, these days.

Bruce goes to college earlier than most, but even then everything seems just a bit dull, the colors never as strong as the red he had seen. He gets his degree, then his masters, then a few PhDs, so many of them he feels like he’s lost count. When there's numbers and text in front of him, everything seems to fade away. Sometimes he stops, and looks around. It feels like his life is slipping away, like he is not the one living it. He never quite knows what to do about it, though, so he does nothing.

That is, until he meets Betty Ross.

She’s bright and young and has a sparkle in her eyes that never seems to go out. They talk about astrophysics and microbiology and the meaning of life, and Bruce inexplicably finds that his world has color again. Bruce loves her voice and loves her mind and loves… her.

(It feels unfair that her first words were _“Hello, you’re Dr. Banner, aren’t you? Pleasure to meet you”_ , and not the ones marked in his skin. It feels unfair that it wasn’t her, that he is bound to be with someone who calls him a monster instead.)

When they first kiss, it is sweeter than anything Bruce has ever tasted. She stops him, though, when he goes to chase her soft lips again, and asks about his words. “They don’t matter.” He mutters, leaning back. Betty doesn’t look at him with pity, and Bruce loves her even more for it. Instead, she rolls up her sleeve, showing him a neat line of cursive in the underside of her arm. _“It’s part of the job”_ , it reads.

“Do you not want… this, then?” He asks, feeling cold. 

“That’s not what I mean, Bruce, and you know it.” She replies, frowning. “ I just feel like it wouldn’t be right not to bring it up. It doesn’t mean I don’t love what we have, here and now.” She says, and kisses him again.

Maybe Bruce can also not care about the future, if the present feels good like this.

-

And then, because this is Bruce’s life, the gamma ray radiation accident happens.

Bruce wakes up naked to find a destroyed lab, the facility far more damaged than what his experimental bomb could ever do. Betty tells him the exposure to the radiation changed his DNA, that he grew bigger and his skin turned green. That he seemed extremely angry, and not himself at all.

And Bruce thinks, _Oh._

So that’s what it meant, after all.

-

After that, Bruce is too worried about trying to control his anger and running from General Ross to think much of the words written over his skin. 

The life of research and deep, silly talks with Betty in the only bar near the facility seems like a distant dream, now. He sleeps in lumpy beds when he’s lucky, and dirty floors when he’s not. He starts to remember what it’s like to feel hungry, and it feels like there’s not a single moment in which he’s not afraid of losing control, of becoming something _other._

When he one day wakes up in the middle of a destroyed Harlem, he finally agrees with his soulmate. 

He is, indeed, a monster.

-

A secret government agent finds him hidden in India, where he’s trying to disappear and maybe help a few people along the way. She’s pretty, with a sort of deadly, calculated grace in all of her movements. Bruce pretends to be angry enough to turn into the other guy, just to see what she’ll do. The caution in her eyes turns to fear as she instantly raises a gun.

 _Good,_ Bruce thinks bitterly. _She would be an idiot not to fear me._

He’s taken to the flying headquarters of Shield, and as he is directed to a lab Bruce thinks amusedly that they really want him for his brain, and not because of the other guy. That was a first. Everyone seems wary of him, though, hands hovering above their gun holsters even as Bruce does something as innocuous as asking for a bit of coffee. He knows he deserves it, but it doesn’t make it any less exhausting.

Apparently, there is a lunatic from outer space trying to conquer Earth. Bruce considers being surprised for a moment, but life has been so weird lately that alien, god-like dictators aren’t even so strange, after all. He meets his supposed team, including one of such alien beings (that looks suspiciously human, for all that science fiction had led him to expect otherwise) and a man that had been frozen for seventy years, though he didn’t look a day older than twenty.

And then he meets Tony.

He storms into the room with a cheeky grin and smart words, looking as if they aren’t in the imminence of an alien invasion. He talks about high energy density and thermonuclear astrophysics like they’re discussing the weather, and Bruce smiles despite himself. He always did like smart people. 

And then Tony turns to him, offering his hand to shake, and says: “It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster.” His eyes sparkle as he says the last words, like he and Bruce are old friends sharing a joke. Bruce is so surprised he barely knows what to say.

“... Thanks.” He finally settles on, voice unsure. Tony just smiles. 

This is not at all what Bruce expected. On the rare moments he wondered what it would be like when he met his soulmate, he always imagined a somber voice, maybe a tone of cruel, ironic amusement at the end. Bruce was not a good person, therefore his soulmate must not be very good, too. Tony, though… Tony is bright and loud, with a smart word always at the tip of his lips and the kind of easy smile Bruce could never quite learn how to make.

Most importantly, he seems to have no idea that they are soulmates.

At first, Bruce is relieved. No one deserves to be stuck with him, and it would be for the best if Tony never knew. That way, he could find someone else, someone better than the monster he had become. Bruce would simply not get any closer to him, and that would be the end of it. 

Tony, however, seems to have other plans.

He is the only one that speaks freely around Bruce, without any kind of fear or wariness. It wasn’t stupidity, because he seriously doubted Tony was even capable of that, nor was it ignorance of what Bruce could become. Rather, Tony simply didn’t seem to care. He considered Bruce as the person he was, not the monster he could become, and that… That was new.

They work together, discussing scientific terms and making silly jokes, and Bruce almost feels like himself again. The air doesn’t seem as heavy, when he’s with Tony. Ironically, he doesn’t feel as much of a monster.

(Bruce falls in love easily, silently, without even meaning to).

-

The Battle of New York happens, and he can’t even remember most of it.

He gets flashes, a few words. More anger than he’s felt in years. And then, he remembers seeing Tony falling from the sky. 

The Hulk roars, jumping to catch him in mid-air. Even with the fury that defines his existence, he knows that the little man in armor is something precious to them. Putting him in the ground, the rest of the team gets closer, while the blond one rips off the little man’s helmet.

He looks dead, face silent and unmoving. The Hulk screams in anger, because the little man can’t die, not now, when they had just found him. The man startles awake, and Bruce remembers nothing after that.

-

He wakes up in one of Stark Tower’s medical facilities and he is so, so angry.

How could Tony do that? Going off to kill himself, just like that? For the first time in his life, Bruce completely agrees with the Hulk: he will not let Tony die.

In a mad rush, he takes off the medical gown and puts on a pair of tattered pants, ignoring the anxious voice of one of the nurses, and goes off to find Tony. It’s only as he has entered the elevator, anger still simmering inside him and making the edges of his vision green, that he realizes he has no idea where Tony is.

“If you’re looking for Tony, Dr. Banner, you’ll find him in the eastern lab in the penthouse.” Says a male British voice, seemingly out of nowhere. “My name is Jarvis, and I’m the AI responsible for this tower.”

“Thanks, uh, Jarvis.” Bruce replies. As brilliant as a fully operational AI sounds, he would have to wait until later to ask Tony about it.

He finds him curved over one of the worktables, tinkering with an Iron Man helmet, face still bruised and bloodied at some parts.

“Tony!” Bruce exclaims, struggling to keep his voice down. The man in question looks at him, startled. “What did you think you were doing?”

“Well, people usually buy me dinner first.” He says, looking down at Bruce’s bare chest. Bruce ignores him.

“You.. you…” He gesticulates, frustrated. “You could have died! Just like that, and I would never see you again. How could you do that?” Bruce asks, anger and despair coloring his voice. He can feel it as if it had happened, how it would be if Tony never went back from the portal.

“I did what I had to do.” He replies, voice now serious as he holds the screwdriver he had in hand so tight his knuckles turned white.

“No, you didn’t have to do that! Thor could have fixed it, or... or someone else, but not you!” Bruce screams. There is a chaotic kind of energy building up in his chest, born from anger and fear and desperation, and Bruce feels like he can’t control any of the words coming out of his mouth.

“And why do you care?” Tony yells, frustration coloring his voice.

“Because you’re my soulmate, and I can’t lose you too!” Bruce screams back, and Tony’s eyes widen. A second later, Bruce realizes what he said, and takes a step back, just as surprised. 

“You… but you never said anything, I just assumed…” Tony replies, voice confused and hurt and hopeful all at once.

“I… I didn’t want you to be stuck with… me, I suppose.” Bruce explains, the anger leaving him as quickly as it had come. He suddenly feels exposed, vulnerable. It’s an odd sensation, one he’s not used to.

“Can I see it?” And now Tony seems more confident, the hope shining in his eyes like that is the thing he wants the most in the world. Wordlessly, Bruce points him to the mark in his ribcage, messy lines starting just below his heart. Tony reaches to touch it with the tip of his fingers, a strange sort of reverence in his movements.

“Yours is here.” He says, after a moment, lowering the top of his shirt to show a simple _“Thanks”_ written in neat, small letters in his collarbone. “I always thought I would never find my soulmate, you know. That they would pass by me and I’d never notice.” Tony comments, smiling sadly. “But now… now you found me, Bruce.” He says, voice filled with a sort of giddy joy.

Bruce looks into his eyes, brown and bright and beautiful, the only person in the world who doesn’t see him as a monster, and realizes for the first time that loving him was inevitable.

When they kiss, Bruce can taste the smile in Tony’s lips, and it feels like coming home.

**Author's Note:**

> [Flufftober](http://giucorreias.tumblr.com/post/178632259369/so-i-was-looking-around-and-noticed-there-were-) , you said? I think I heard Fluff and Angst haha.  
>  The prompt of the day was "words", and I literally died over this piece. Seriously, I've been working on it for what feels like a million years, and it simply didn't end!! So, yeah, I hope y'all liked the results of my suffering :P  
> (also I know nobody cares but I headcanon that Betty's soulmate is Sharon Carter, they meet when Betty gets tangled on Avengers business and go on to be a badass lesbian couple bye)


End file.
